Lightkeeper's Wife

by Sarah Anne Johnson

  “Too bad it doesn’t last long,” Rusty said.

  Jeb didn’t speak and Mark took an extra chunk of bread and put it on his plate.

  “I’ve nothing against good food,” Mark said.

  ***

  The Alice K sailed the shipping lanes, tacking across the wind for weeks in search of plunder, and as food supplies dwindled to nothing but hardtack and limes, they searched for sea turtles. The giant turtles were easy prey as they swam or floated along the surface of the water. It was afternoon when the crew pulled one alongside, shot it in the head, and hauled it up onto the decks using a block and tackle. Briggs cut away the meat with his machete. Then he stood back to let another sailor labor among the flesh and blood of the animal. After they’d scavenged every scrap and packed the meat in a barrel for the cook, the men heaved the shell over the side and flushed the deck with buckets of seawater. Blue stood near the bow and watched the empty shell float into the distance. Eventually the shell would fill with water and sink, but at that moment it drifted lightly over the waves like an open palm.

  She heard his footsteps behind her, knew they were Mark’s because they didn’t belong to any of the crew and the other survivor limped. He leaned his back against the foremast to watch the turtle shell bob across the water. When the shell was out of sight, Mark said, “You don’t take sport in hunting turtles?”

  Blue turned to size up this stranger, with his skinny arms and soft flesh. He was no fighter, even if he recovered his strength. “You’ll not survive the next raid,” she said.

  “I’m good with a cutlass, and not a bad shot with a pistol.”

  Blue turned her attention aft, down the length of the ship, past the masts and cabins, over the stern bulwarks toward the frothing wake fanning out from the transom.

  “Can I show you something?” Mark sat down with his back against the mast and unfolded a worn piece of paper, which held a few bits of wood and string. His weatherworn good looks and the gentleness in his voice pried something loose in her. She didn’t want to talk to him.

  “It’s a model of the Alice K,” he said. “I’m working on the hull. When I finish, I’ll give it to the captain for saving us.”

  Blue laughed bitterly. “You think you’ve been saved?” She took the model and eyed the lines in all directions. “The stern comes in here,” she said.

  Mark took the model back and continued to work with his rigging knife.

  “What happened to the other whaleboats?”

  “Two others set out when we got stove by the whale, but that’s all that made it off the ship. Rest of the men went down. That whale came up fast. Those cast into the water swam for the whaleboats. Those other two boats, I don’t know if they’re dead or alive. Could be floating in circles for all I know.” When Mark relaxed into his craft, his voice softened. “At least that’s what I hope.”

  “Hope’s a fool’s dream,” Blue said.

  “You’re a cynic, but hope is in my nature.”

  “There’s nature and there’s will. I strive to let my will rule my foolish nature. It’s the only way to survive.”

  “Well said. You’ve been on this ship awhile?”

  “Awhile,” Blue said.

  “And wearing men’s clothes?” Mark asked, but Blue ignored him and he wasn’t bold enough to ask again. Blue watched his arm shifting as he worked the knife, his energy focused and intent. His wavy brown hair pressed flat against his head, shone under the sun. A small black mole beneath his right ear looked like a jewel set against his tanned skin. Mark turned from the model to face her, his dark eyes a question she couldn’t read. She left without a word.

  ***

  Her nightmares were the same every night: her hands soaked in water as she tried to scrape away the dried blood caked in her palms. “You can’t get rid of a stain like that,” Mark said. Blue sat up in her hammock and searched the dark, but there was no one there. Since Mark came onboard, he’d started appearing in her dreams. Weeks of bad dreams, long days without another ship in sight, pulled at the careful knots Blue had tied around herself. She made drawings of her dreams: sea chests stacked by her hammock so that she couldn’t get out, Jack standing over her, his cutlass drawn across her throat.

  When another week passed without sight of a merchant runner, fights began to break out along the deck, and the crew turned on each other, fists flying, over things as foolish as who got first pick from the basket of bread at supper.

  The more Blue tried to sleep, the more sleep eluded her, and when she slept, she woke with her hands in pain from trying to scrape the blood away. One night, she flung herself out of her hammock and stormed up to the deck in frustration. She stood by the whaleboat, stored upside down near one of the cabins, and ran her hand along the smooth curve of the hull, then bent to take a look underneath. It was too dark to see anything. She squatted down and crawled underneath the boat, a small cave that would protect her from the night and the crew and her own bad dreams. Under the boat the air was close and quiet. She leaned her back against the hull and let go a heavy sigh.

  “Who’s there?” a voice said, not far from her.

  Blue instinctively put her right hand on her cutlass and tried to distinguish the voice. “It’s Blue.”

  “Do you ever sleep?” Mark asked. Blue didn’t answer. “Well, if you’re going to stay here, you can at least talk to me.”

  Blue couldn’t see him in the dark. The cocoon of the boat surrounded them in a hushed privacy.

  “Tell me how you came to be on this ship, and I’ll tell you a secret.”

  “What do I care about your secret? You’re nobody. You’re lucky you’re not dead. If you hadn’t agreed to join the crew, you would’ve been fed to the sharks. There’s time to get rid of you yet.”

  Mark listened to her rant and didn’t speak.

  “Maybe I should cut your throat now.” Blue pulled her cutlass from the leather sheath halfheartedly, then let it fall onto the deck. She leaned back against the hull, knees drawn up. Nothing felt right, not the cutlass in her hand, or the slow progress of the ship, or the strange lure of this man’s voice. “I’ve been onboard this ship nearly two years,” she said.

  “And before that?”

  “I sailed with my husband off the coast of Jamaica on a merchant runner.”

  “This crew raided your husband’s ship?” Mark asked. “They killed him?”

  “If my husband had fought like a man, he wouldn’t have died like a dog.”

  Mark was quiet. Blue tried to see his face in the dark, but beneath the whaleboat she could only make out shadows. She let her head fall back against the hull.

  “So Jack spared your life for your service on the Alice K,” Mark said.

  Blue regretted the conversation already. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.” She jerked forward to leave, but Mark grabbed her by the elbow, and she shook herself loose.

  “Wait.”

  Blue leaned away from him, as if to take in the length of him. She hated the way his voice worked on her.

  “Give me your hand,” he said, holding his out for her.

  “What for?”

  “Trust me,” Mark said, his palm upturned, waiting. She didn’t have to trust him—if he pulled anything, she could slice him up quicker than filleting a grouper.

  Mark drew Blue’s hand toward his chest and slipped her fingers beneath the folds of his linen shirt. He undid one button, then another.

  “That’s all you want? Why didn’t you just say so?” Sex was nothing more to Blue than an itch to scratch, a way to pass the time. The physical rush of sex had the same effect on her as taking over a ship. A man was only something to conquer or climb onto. But there was a charge between them that made her uneasy. She wanted to make him stop.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said, his sour breath mixed with the close sea air under the
boat.

  A voice scratched the air. “Watch that topsail, don’t strain the mast in this wind. If it picks up at all, I want that topsail down, you hear me?” Jack was patrolling the deck in a jangle of buttons and knives and the assortment of gear he saw fit to carry around on the bulk of his body. That was one of the things that had intrigued Blue in the beginning. Jack was ready for anything, war or sex or eating—it didn’t matter. He took it all in. His hunger was vast.

  “He’ll kill you if I don’t do it first,” Blue said, crawling out from under the whaleboat. She looked around and skulked through the shadows along the rail and down into the fo’c’sle among the snores and rumblings of the crew. She lay back in her hammock, her body pulsing, and fell asleep with the sound of Mark’s voice running through her. She wanted to kill him. Or lie down and sleep beside him.

  11

  Everett Hopkins leaned into the stiff breeze. He sat atop a wooden wagon, his black seaman’s hat pulled down over his ears, the collar on his seaman’s jacket flapped up against his neck. Hannah watched as he slowed the two horses and made the final turn onto the driveway. It had been weeks since a man had pulled up on a wagon. At the first sound of the horses on the road, she’d dipped her head to peer out the window with the old expectation, and then caught herself. Her life with John still pulsed through places inside her that had not yet heard the news.

  Everett pulled back on the reins until the horses tossed their heads, letting go their cloudy breath. Hannah met him on the edge of the lawn, John’s coat covering her down to her knees.

  “What’re you doing out in this cold?” he said. Everett was Dangerfield’s shipbuilder, known all along the New England coast and even farther south for the merchant boats he launched out of his barn on the Pamet River.

  “I could ask you the same, Everett.” She saw then that his niece, Sylvie Avery, sat on the other side of him, hands tucked into the opposite sleeves of her black coat, as if it were a muff. Her black hair fell in wisps around the bottom of her gray scarf, and large green eyes lit the delicate structure of her face. She’d been widowed in the October Gale of 1841, her husband Job never heard from again along with fifty-six other men from town. These were young and middle-aged fishermen at work hauling in their catch on George’s Bank when the gale struck. They sailed for Dangerfield Light, but the high winds carried them off to the southeast where they were wrecked on the Nantucket shoals.

  Since Job’s death, Sylvie had been helping Everett at the shipyard, first on the books, then offering suggestions on designs. She’d even been known to pick up a caulking bag when they were late launching a ship. Hannah knew for herself that work was an antidote to loss—providing a momentum to carry her through grief. She imagined it was the same for Sylvie.

  Everett coiled the reins at his feet and descended from the wagon, his legs supporting the barrel of his body.

  “Come inside and warm yourselves up for a few minutes.”

  “No, no. That’s not why we’ve come.” His voice was warm, fatherly. Hannah wanted to swim into that voice and let it buoy her. “I’ve come to show you this boat.”

  The boat rested in the back of the wagon; the white lines of the hull and the full, swollen arc of the skiff’s body loomed by Hannah’s head. She ran her hand along the curve of wood and held her head close to the hull, as if she could hear the quality of the boat humming through its carefully constructed seams.

  “I saw your hired man out on the fence. He’s a good worker from the looks of it. Is it true what the missus said? He’ll be leaving you soon?” Everett leaned against the boat, stretched an arm along the gunwale.

  Looking up, she could see Billy making repairs along the farthest length of fence, his posture akin to prayer. “I imagine so, now that he’s got his strength back.”

  “I was in your shoes, I’d ask him to stay on a while. Couldn’t hurt to have a little help through the winter.”

  “I’m sure he’s got better things on offer.”

  “Worth asking,” Everett said, scratching at the silver whiskers along his jaw.

  “What’ll people say, me having a strange man here and John just gone?”

  “They’ll say the usual rubbish, that you shouldn’t be at the lighthouse for starters, that you should live with your parents until you find a man.” Everett laughed. “Lord knows what they’ll think of you keeping a man around the house. But don’t let that stop you, Hannah. The old biddies will talk about anything, especially things they know nothing about.”

  “Leave her alone, uncle,” Sylvie said.

  “It’s 1843. If they can talk about freeing the coloreds we can talk about our women surviving widowhood, especially in a town like this.”

  “You sound like a revolutionary, Everett.”

  “This Billy, he give you any trouble?”

  Hannah stood back from the boat, arms crossed. “Some trouble.”

  “Enough to send him away?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, you know where to find me, and you got Tom close by,” Everett said, as if that settled it. He leaned away from the boat where Hannah brushed her fingers absently along the hull.

  “It’s beautiful, Everett. Did you build it?”

  “The cedar and white oak’s from my own land. She’s nearly fifteen feet long, and look how she’s tapered at stem and stern for riding through the surf. That was Sylvie’s idea, there.” Sylvie nodded and looked away toward Billy while Everett traced the curved lines of the hull with thick fingers. “I built air chambers in each end and added cork fenders here on the outer rails to protect her from bumping against sinking ships. And it’ll help keep her afloat. You got your righting lines, here, in case you capsize, and she’s light and maneuverable.”

  “She’ll carry six or eight men,” Sylvie said. “Depending on their size of course, and your own strength, but you don’t seem to be lacking strength.”

  Hannah stepped back to create distance between herself and the skiff. “Are you offering her for sale, Everett? I could never afford a boat like this.”

  “I know, I know. But I heard about your rescue. It got me thinking, and once I’m thinking, then I’m building, and once I’m building, I can’t stop. Your situation, what with you going out in a storm, and possibly not being as strong as a man…” He spoke these words delicately so as not to offend her. “You need a skiff you can maneuver through the surf. Well, it presented an interesting problem. I figured if you had the right boat, more might survive.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s all true. But I still—”

  “John helped me a considerable amount on that last schooner. He worked hard and didn’t ask a penny in return. That’s just the kind of friend he—” Everett said, but he stopped himself. “Consider this payment, if that’s how you need to think of it. If it works out for you, you’ll let me know. It’s my first surfboat, and you’re going to test her out for me. There’s no one else who would do it. Now where do you want her, ’cause I’m not for arguing. I get enough of that at home.” Everett leaned under the boat and unfastened the ropes that held the skiff in place. “You want me to leave her right here in the road? That won’t do you much good, will it?”

  “No, it won’t,” she said softly.

  “All right then.”

  Half an hour later, the sound of Everett’s horses clomping into the distance rose on the wind and settled somewhere out beyond the fields. She wanted to run inside, tell John about the boat, and make him come outside now and take a look. He’d go over every detail until he understood the boat beyond its practical use to a deeper beauty, where the clean lines and fine craftsmanship, hand-hewn boards and rigorous design came together in a boat that moved with a dancer’s grace through the water. A boat that could perform rescues with unsurpassed safety and efficiency. What do you think of that, John? I bet you never thought you’d see something like that. The southwest wind c
ame up sudden and cold, and loneliness swooped down on Hannah. If she went back to bed, she might never climb out again. The white bottom of the surfboat beckoned her from the beach.

  ***

  That afternoon, William Pike searched for the lightkeeper’s wife in the barn behind the hay bales, in the root cellar among bushels of potatoes and jars of beach plum and blueberries, but not until he climbed the lighthouse did he see the surfboat heading into the waves. Hannah used her body as if she had something to prove, when anyone could see what she was capable of in a boat. He climbed down the circle of the lighthouse stairs, and from atop the dunes, he watched her: a small white mark moving south along the shore. When the craft blurred with the white, foam crests of the waves, he squinted and held his breath until he saw her again. Hannah’s life here felt familiar to him in a way he wanted to flee, but he had nowhere else to go, nor the strength to go there. Hannah’s wholesome beauty and the swift regard with which she dispatched her duties accentuated his wretchedness and everything that had sent him running away from the Caribbean: the terrible things he’d seen there, the terrible things he’d done. He didn’t want to return to that life. He wanted to use himself up with work and let sleep take him at the end of each day so that he could wake up and do it again. He was grateful for work and someone to feed him. Grateful to let each day pass. Grateful until he started seeing her in his half sleep. A woman whose attention he didn’t deserve. Her long hair falling over her shoulders when she’d tended him by the fire in those first days of his recovery, the fierce gleam in her eyes when she confronted him about his drinking. She knew her own mind and it frightened him and snapped him awake.

  He watched as she surfed the boat toward the beach, then veered off before she reached the shore and rowed again into the waves. He wanted to stop watching her, but didn’t she need someone to safeguard her?

  “What’re you doing out here?” Tom asked.

  Billy stared at Tom, wondering where he’d come from and why he’d come. “She’s out in the waves in that boat.” Billy pointed.